272 Quotes by Sue Grafton

There’s really no such thing as an ‘ex-cop’ or a cop who’s ‘off-duty’ or ‘retired.’ Once trained, once indoctrinated, a cop is always alert, assessing reality in terms of its potential for illegal acts.

People can hold out just so long and then they fold.

There is no sound so terrible as a man’s sorrow for his own death.

I started writing seriously when I was 18, wrote my first novel when I was 22, and I’ve never stopped writing since.

Emotion doesn’t travel in a straight line. Like water, our feelings trickle down through cracks and crevices, seeking out the little pockets of neediness and neglect, the hairline fractures in our character usually hidden from public view.

To distract myself, I thought about all the cusswords I knew and arranged them in alphabetical order.

I think you’d best make your peace with the past since you’ve come this far. I think you know by now that you won’t go back again.

The memory is like orbiting twin stars, one visible, one dark, the trajectory of what’s evident forever affected by the gravity of what’s concealed.

Amazing how quickly someone else’s problems become yours. Trouble creates a vacuum into which the rest of us get sucked.